Much of this essay was published almost eight years ago, when I first started writing in “Our America”. But here in Ohio, the question of where transgendered kids are allowed to “pee” is back. The lame duck State legislature thinks this issue is more important than the myriad of other problems Ohio faces, from drought conditions to road construction to rampant political corruption. So instead of fixing those, they pick on the kids most likely to be victims.
The facts: 3.3% of high school students identify as transgendered. In Ohio that means somewhere around 17,000 kids. That would be about 12 per high school if they all went to school. And some are in public schools, some in private. But many are “online” or home schooled, so the number per school is less. But, Wednesday, the Ohio State Legislature went out of their way to point those few kids out, and make their life even harder. Here in Ohio, the bullies are in the State House.
Made-Up Issue
George Takei of “Star Trek” fame, made a statement about transgender kids. .He spoke about their being forced to use a “biological” restroom rather than their “identified” restroom. He said, “This is a made up issue”.
I spent 36 years in public high and middle schools, and had the opportunity to interact with transgender kids. They are not “a danger to our children”. First of all, they are “our children”, often children most in need of protection. Second, they are kids: kids who have made a most difficult decision.
They recognize that their brain’s sexual identity and their biological sexual identity are not the same. It is such a powerful force that they are willing to face all of the barriers that society marshals against them, just as the kids who find they are gay or bisexual do. It’s not a “choice”, it’s a recognition of who they are.
By the way, no matter how old you are now, they were in your school too. But, until recently, those kids were forced to live closeted lives, lying to everyone (often including their parents, friends and even themselves) about who they are. Many still do.
School Problems
Schools have been aware of this issue for years. Many schools have quietly taken care of the problem: transgender girls (biological boys) who dress like girls and act like girls, use the girls restroom and no one is the wiser. The same is true with transgender boys (they go in the stalls, as do many cisgender boys).
And that argument about locker rooms and showers is from a totally different generation. Today’s kids don’t “get naked” in school. Most school shower rooms (other than for wrestling teams, where almost all kids wear some form of swimsuit) have become storerooms. And the vast majority of kids don’t have a problem with any of this. They accept the differences of their friends. It’s the adults who are hung up.
New Frontier
Transgender is the new frontier of identity law. Our society has reached a general understanding about gay and bisexual people; we have removed most of the laws that discriminated against their conduct. In public schools the era of “being gay means being bullied” has changed. The school administration is now protecting the victims, rather than enabling the perpetrators (that wasn’t always true, “in the day”). While incidents still occur, in general, kids accept their friends as they are – or don’t deal with them at all.
Transgender kids (and adults) are not “molesters” sneaking into the opposites sex’s restroom to “catch a peep”. They are the victims. As a society, protecting the civil rights of folks is not a state’s rights issue. The fine old white men in the State House today, argue that states should be able to determine these rights. But that’s an old argument, a holdover from the Civil War, and it shouldn’t pass legal muster, or have a place in a modern society.
As the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the multiple civil rights acts passed since state: a citizen of the United States enjoys the rights and protections of all US citizens in every state. We should not have different rights in Pennsylvania than we have in North Carolina, or Ohio.
And this should apply to all forms of discrimination, including transgender folks. We must NOT discriminate against the most fragile members of our society, children who are discovering that their differences are so much greater than their peers. That’s got to be hard enough, without the government (or the Principal) checking their genitals at the restroom door.
As always, I certainly enjoy reading your articles. I often wish we were still teaching and coaching together so we could engage in conversation about these very poignant issues.